Obama Takes Aim at Bush and McCain With a Forceful Call to Change America

Released on: August 29, 2008, 7:34 am

Press Release Author: 3olome

Industry: Government

Press Release Summary: Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party presidentialnomination on Thursday, declaring that the "American promise has been threatened" byeight years under President Bush and that John McCain represented a continuation ofpolicies that undermined the nation's economy and imperiled its standing around theworld.

Press Release Body: The speech by Senator Obama, in front of an audience of nearly80,000 people on a warm night in a football stadium refashioned into a vastpolitical stage for television viewers, left little doubt how he intended to presshis campaign against Mr. McCain this fall.

In cutting language, and to cheers that echoed across the stadium, he linked Mr.McCain to what he described as the "failed presidency of George W. Bush" and -reflecting what has been a central theme of his campaign since he entered the race -"the broken politics in Washington."

"America, we are better than these last eight years," he said. "We are a bettercountry than this."

But Mr. Obama went beyond attacking Mr. McCain by linking him to Mr. Bush and hispolicies. In the course of a 42-minute speech that ended with a booming display offireworks and a shower of confetti, he offered searing and far-reaching attacks onhis presumptive Republican opponent, repeatedly portraying him as the face of theold way of politics and failed Republican policies.

He said Mr. McCain was out of touch with the problems of everyday Americans. "It'snot because John McCain doesn't care," he said. "It's because John McCain doesn'tget it."

And he went so far as to attack the presumed strength of Mr. McCain's campaign,national security. "You know, John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Ladento the gates of hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives," hesaid.

The speech loomed as arguably Mr. Obama's most important of the campaign to date. Itwas an opportunity to present himself to Americans just now beginning to tune in onthis campaign, to make the case against Mr. McCain and to offer what many Democratssay he has failed to offer to date: an idea of what he stands for, beyond a promiseof change.

To that end, he emphasized what he described as concrete steps he would take toaddress the anxieties of working-class Americans, promising tax cuts for the middleclass and pledging to wean the country from dependence on Middle East oil within 10years to address high fuel prices.

With the speech, Mr. Obama closed out his party's convention here and prepared for aquick shift of public attention to the Republicans as Mr. McCain moved to name hisrunning mate and his party got ready for its convention in St. Paul on Monday.

He delivered it in a most unconventional setting, becoming the third nominee of amajor party in the nation's history to leave the site of his convention to give hisacceptance speech at a stadium. In this case, it was Invesco Field, set against theRockies and about a mile from the arena where he had been nominated the nightbefore. His aides chose the stadium to signal a break from typical politics and topermit thousands of his supporters from across the country to hear him speak.

And it came on a night that offered - by the coincidence of scheduling - a reminderof the historic nature of the Obama candidacy: 45 years to the day after the Rev.Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on the Mall inWashington. Mr. Obama is the first African-American to be nominated for the WhiteHouse by a major party, a fact that, for all its significance, has been barelymentioned over the course of this four-day gathering.

Even in invoking the anniversary of the King speech, Mr. Obama only alluded to race.But he quoted a famous phrase from Dr. King's address to reinforce a central themeof his own speech. "America, we cannot turn back," Mr. Obama said. "Not with so muchwork to be done."

Mr. McCain marked the occasion of the speech by releasing a television advertisementin which, looking into the camera, he paid tribute to Mr. Obama and hisaccomplishment. "How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day,"Mr. McCain said. "Tomorrow, we'll be back at it. But tonight, Senator, job welldone.

The advertisement stood in stark contrast to a summer of slashing attacks on Mr.Obama by Mr. McCain that apparently contributed to the tightening of this race. Andthe softer tone did not last; Mr. Obama was still on the stage, watching thefireworks, when Mr. McCain's campaign issued a statement attacking him.

"Tonight, Americans witnessed a misleading speech that was so fundamentally at oddswith the meager record of Barack Obama," said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for Mr.McCain.

In his speech, Mr. Obama scored Mr. McCain for raising questions about hispatriotism, and trying, he said, to turn a big election into a fight on smallsquabbles.